More than 400 confirmed influenza cases in province to date

Widespread influenza activity is still being reported across Newfoundland, with more than 400 lab-confirmed cases and nine deaths so far this flu season.

The latest weekly influenza report from the Department of Health and Community Services shows a total of 149 confirmed flu cases for the latest week for which figures are available —Jan. 13-19. For that one-week alone, there were 50 hospitalizations, five intensive care unit (ICU) admissions and four deaths.

To date this flu season, which began in August 2012, there have been 408 lab-confirmed cases in the province, involving 138 hospitalizations, 16 ICU admissions and nine deaths.

While influenza activity is considered sporadic in Labrador, it's still categorized as widespread across the island.

The Department of Health report says the number of laboratory-confirmed cases recently increased significantly in Central Health and Western Health, with a stabilization of cases in Eastern Health.

Of the 408 cases confirmed to date, 231 have been in Eastern Health's district, 89 in Central Health, 75 in Western Health and 13 in the Labrador-Grenfell region.

Seven of the nine deaths have been in the Eastern Health region and two in Central Health's region.

The Department of Health says there have been 42 outbreaks of influenza-like illness reported in the past month.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, many regions across Canada continue to report widespread and localized influenza activity and, during the week of Jan. 13-19, there were 118 new influenza outbreaks reported.

To date this flu season, there have been 19,232 lab-confirmed flu cases across the country, including 12,032 identified as Influenza A, 473 as Influenza B and 348 as Pandemic H1N1.

Comments

Recent comments

Saelcove - I'm not sure why you would classify the canadian health care system as being "third world", yes the wait times are long and it's not perfect but we have it pretty good here in Canada and I don't for a minute take that for granted, neither should you...look at the third world countries, really look then hopefully you'll have a different perspective....

St.John's

January 30, 2013 - 06:34

Contagion is not in the purvue of a system. Prevention starts with hand washing and covering coughs - and staying away from others if one is ill.